two things that say "christmas time is here"

Union Square Tree lighting

Starbucks eggnog lattes

Castro beauty

In one of SF's famously beautiful Indian summer nights, I caught this photo of our famously beautiful independent theater. I need to support our independent theaters more, maybe I'll catch the new Tron? I think the last time I saw a movie here, it was playing Milk.

Loneliness of the SF Transbay Terminal

Soon to be only a memory, and replaced by Transbay Transit Center. OK, not so soon (est 2015).

Birth of Impressionism at De Young

I finally attended the Birth of Impressionism show at the De Young, part of the traveling Masterpieces of the Musee D'Orsay collection. First of all, don't attend this show on a weekend! My friend and I thought going early on a Sunday morning might be a good way to avoid a crowd (there were several city events that should have attracted people too, like the SF Marathon and ...well, church). Boy were we wrong. At least we were able to get a member's ticket without reserving online for a same day show.

Not to say I didn't enjoy the show immensely, but walking around like a packed can of sardines is difficult. The standouts for me were Bouguereau's "Birth of Venus", Degas' "The Dancing Lesson", and Caillebotte's "The Floor Scrapers".

The most famous painting (for Americans anyway) on view may very well be Whistler's portrait of his mother, the horribly titled "Arrangement in Gray and Black No.1".

I was intrigued by the relationships between the young Impressionist painters, especially Frederic Bazille and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Both painted affectionate portraits of the other, and are on view together. I felt a bond to Bazille, as he was forced to study medicine, despite his first love of art. Sadly, he died at the age of 29 fighting in the Franco-Prussian War.

The show runs until 9/6/2010, after which the second D'orsay show Post Impressionist Masterpieces will begin it's run, from 9/25/2010-1/18/2011.

3 Wong Kar Wei classics now on Blu-ray

These gorgeous shots are the work/collaboration of cinematographer Christopher Doyle and director Wong Kar Wei, and three of their best films are now available on blu-ray:

Happy Together

Fallen Angels

Chungking Express

New Architecture in Las Vegas

One of the highlights of my last trip to Vegas was an architectural tour of some of the new buildings. By chance, I got to visit the newly opened Frank Gehry designed Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health just a day after the center opened to the public, so everything looked shiny and polished.

Gehry may be an unconventional choice for a scientific building, but his organic shapes and now iconic metal sheets seemed appropriate for a facility dedicated to researching brain diseases in all it's complexities. I'm thinking of not only the brain, but the spinal cord, nerves, axons and dendrites.

This is Gehry's first building in Vegas, and according to this LA Times piece, a personal connection with Huntington's Disease sealed the deal.

My photos were also featured in Designboom's coverage of the facility.

I also visited City Center on the strip, and was most impressed the Daniel Libeskind's Crystals mall. I was a little unnerved by all the sharp edges in his Jewish Contemporary Museum in SF, but the angular forms fit much better in this high end retail space.

Art purchase - Paul Madonna pen & ink drawing

I attended SFMOMA's Artist Gallery sale last night and hoped to find something inspiring. I made a great impulsive purchase a few years ago with a Winni Wintermeyer photograph "280". I've really grown to love that piece. Well, I did find something. It's a Paul Madonna pen & ink drawing of SF from his weekly SFGate series All over coffee. I love his moody and melancholic mixture of "overheard" text with gorgeous SF urban drawings. His work is direct pen on paper, with no pre-sketching, so there is a "mistakes and all" beauty to the drawings. This piece called "On Guerrero" was published 10/25/09. I was also attracted to it b/c the words capture alot of what I was feeling last year. 2009 was a brutal year.